Masturbation in marriage.

This is a powerful video I came across.  The second part that deals with masturbation and marriage hit me especially hard.  It brought back the memory early in my marriage of my husband telling me that he had had to resort to masturbation.  I. Was. Devastated. I sat in my room and cried desperate tears. My husband had committed the sin next to murder because of MY ineptness as a wife.  I had a baby and a toddler, was alone at least 16 hours of the day and most of the night, had recently had a ruptured appendix which took months to recover from and had spiraled into a deep depression which required medication.  The last thing I needed was the guilt heaped on me because of his "sin", but there it was.  It was my fault.  If I were just a better wife...

Just imagine if I had been able to say, like the woman in the video suggests, "go take care of yourself, honey," without feeling any guilt or pressure.  Without the additional weight of another's "sin".

About 20 years later, at the age of 45, I was extremely dissatisfied  with my marriage and especially the state of my sex life.  It's true that women reach their sexual peak in the 40's and the attempts at sex with my husband were not only few and far between but bitterly frustrating.  The first time I tried masturbating I was horribly ashamed and really had no idea what I was doing.  But to have reached that ripe old age and still not be familiar with my own body was the real sin.  And it's a sad state of affairs in a marriage when your first real orgasm is powered by batteries and your own hand.

First I learned to take charge of my own physical and sexual needs and then moved on to emotional and spiritual.   Maybe that's why masturbation is considered so sinful and dangerous to Mormons...it leads to freedom in mind and body.